Gottfried Feder

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Gottfried Feder
Berlin Institute of Technology
FieldUrbanism
School or
tradition		Nazism
Strasserism
Alma materHumboldt University of Berlin
InfluencesLudwig Feuerbach
Wilhelm Marr
Rudolf Jung
Silvio Gesell
ContributionsPlanned community
Deep foundation

Gottfried Feder (27 January 1883 – 24 September 1941) was a German civil engineer, a self-taught economist, and one of the early key members of the Nazi Party and its economic theoretician. One of his lectures, delivered on 12 September 1919, drew Adolf Hitler into the party.[1]

Early life and education

Feder was born in Würzburg on 27 January 1883, the son of civil servant Hans Feder and Mathilde Feder (née Luz). After being taught in a classical Gymnasium[citation needed] first in Ansbach and then in Munich, he studied engineering in Berlin and Zürich. He founded a construction company in 1908 that became particularly active in Bulgaria where it built a number of official buildings.

Feder claimed that he studied financial politics and economics on his own from 1917 onward. But there is no evidence to back up this claim. He developed a hostility towards wealthy bankers during World War I and wrote a "manifesto on breaking the shackles of interest" ("Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft") in 1919. This was soon followed by the founding of a "task force" dedicated to those goals that demanded a nationalisation of all banks and an abolition of interest.

That year, Feder, together with

Hitler's opposition to "Jewish finance capitalism."[3] Delivering political courses alongside Feder was Karl Alexander von Müller (son of Bavaria's Culture Minister) who spotted Hitler's oratorical ability and forwarded his name as a political instructor for the army—an important step in Hitler's career.[4]

1920s politics

In February 1920, together with Adolf Hitler and Anton Drexler, Feder drafted the "

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP), more commonly known as the Nazi Party.[5]

Feder took part in the party's

Jewish citizens. He remained one of the leaders of the anti-capitalistic wing of the NSDAP, and published several papers, including "National and social bases of the German state" (1920), "Das Programm der NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen Grundlagen" ("The programme of the NSDAP and its ideological foundations" 1927) and "Was will Adolf Hitler?" ("What does Adolf Hitler want?", 1931).[citation needed
]

In early 1926, Feder played a key role in assisting Hitler to overcome the challenge to his authority presented by the National Socialist Working Association. This was a short-lived group of northern and western German Gauleiter, organized in September 1925 and led by Gregor Strasser, which unsuccessfully sought to amend the "25 Points." Around Christmas 1925, Feder obtained a copy of the proposed revision and informed Hitler of it. As a coauthor of the original 1920 program, Feder felt protective of it and was furious that an attempt to amend it was underway without his or Hitler's knowledge.[7] At a meeting of the Working Association in Hanover on 24 January 1926, Feder attended, uninvited but as Hitler's representative. The meeting became contentious with Joseph Goebbels, one of the Working Association leaders, demanding that Feder be ejected, shouting: "We don't want any stool pigeons!"[8] However, a vote was taken and Feder was allowed to participate. The draft program was vigorously debated with Feder raising objections on various points. In the end, the Strasser draft was not approved.[9] Shortly afterward, on 14 February, Hitler called a leadership meeting known as the Bamberg Conference where he forcefully opposed the positions advocated by the Working Association and insisted that the original program be retained intact. Strasser was made to retrieve all copies of the draft program that had been distributed. Hitler reasserted his authority as supreme Party leader and stamped out any potential threat from the Working Association, which faded into irrelevance and was formally dissolved later in the year.[10]

Feder briefly dominated the Nazi Party's official views on financial politics, but after he became chairman of the party's economic council in 1931, his anti-capitalist views led to a great decline in financial support from Germany's major industrialists. Following pressure from

Reich Ministry of Economics in July, an appointment that disappointed Feder, who had hoped for a much higher position.[citation needed
]

Nazi Germany

Feder continued to write papers, putting out "Kampf gegen die Hochfinanz" ("The Fight against high finance", 1933) and the

New Town construction.[11]

However, despite its consistency with the

blood and soil ideology of the Nazis, his concept of decentralized factories was successfully opposed by both generals and Junkers.[12] Generals objected because it interfered with rearmament, and Junkers because it would prevent their exploiting their estates for the international market.[13]

When

Technische Hochschule Berlin in December 1936, where he stayed until his death in Murnau, Bavaria
, on 24 September 1941.

Publications by Feder

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-060-38025-0
    .
  2. ISBN 978-0-393-33761-7
    .
  3. ^ Kershaw, Ian (2001) [1991]. Hitler: A Profile in Power, Chapter I, London.
  4. ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 82.
  5. ^ Kershaw 2008, p. 87.
  6. ^ Gottfried Feder in the Reichstag database
  7. ^ Jeremy Noakes (1966) Conflict and Development in the NSDAP 1924-1927, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 1, Issue 4, Sage Publications Ltd., p. 25.
  8. ISBN 978-0-831-77404-2
    .
  9. ^ Jeremy Noakes (1966) Conflict and Development in the NSDAP 1924-1927, pp. 26-27.
  10. ^ Kershaw 2008, pp. 169–170.
  11. ^ Hein, Carola, Visionary Plans and Planners. In Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective (Fiévé, Waley eds.) RoutledgeCurzon.
  12. ISBN 0-03-076435-1
    .
  13. ^ Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p. 154.
  14. ISBN 978-1-258-01696-8
    . Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  15. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8
    .
  16. ISBN 3-906769-72-0
    . Retrieved 15 January 2017.

External links
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